


Falling Star // per aspera ad astra

by charychangeling



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Jack being Jack, Light Angst, Lucifer Feels, Original Character(s), Other, Protective Lucifer, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29111847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charychangeling/pseuds/charychangeling
Summary: [S14 Spoilers!] Since when do demons move through the country in packs? Why are stars suddenly disappearing from the sky? Who is the strange creature, following them and turning everything in their way into rubble and ashes? What initially started with a relatively regular case, to which Sam, Dean, Castiel and Jack were called, ends up entrapping “Team Free Will 2.0” in a sprawling, seemingly inescapable spider web, made up of dozens of interwoven secrets and unsolved questions to which nobody appears to have any answer. What is Jack hiding about Mary’s death? And who is the puzzling girl with the unpredictable abilities who evidently appeared out of nowhere and might she be the one, despite her lack of memory, holding the answers to the numerous questions in the end? Is she also hiding something? A hallucinated savior perhaps, who might not be as unfamiliar as he pretends to be? Concealed enemies, apparent friends and new hopes pose a vast challenge to the Winchesters and their friends, maybe even making them question their initial moral understanding.
Relationships: Lucifer/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 1





	Falling Star // per aspera ad astra

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome!  
> I’m really happy that you’ve somehow ended up here.  
> In the following short preface, I will summarize all the small organizational things, I want to say before the beginning of this story.  
> “Falling Star – per aspera ad astra” (Latin for: “through hardship to the stars”) is my first Supernatural fanfiction and the first part of a planned trilogy. The idea arose – as many of those for my stories tend to do – with a simple “What if…”-question, which I won’t be revealing at this point, though. Maybe it will be visible in the further course of the plot but I will also mention it in the afterword and reflect whether or not I have answered it to my own satisfaction.  
> The story plays out following episode 17 of season 14 (“Game Night”), but from there takes a completely different path than that of the show. It is possible that there will be some story-relevant spoilers here and there concerning the past seasons – especially season 13 and 14 – although I’ll try to largely avoid them.  
> Moreover, I don’t think I have to add that only the main character, her background story and character development, as well as some smaller side characters came from my own pen and that I’ve only “borrowed” the rest of the characters for the sake of telling this little story.  
> I’m also really looking forward to feedback of all kind and I want to encourage you to tell me, if you like my story or have any questions or complaints. I’m already excited to read all of your thoughts and reactions regarding my story.  
> Finally, I want to mention, that English is not my first language. So please excuse any grammatical errors, that might pop up here and there, I will try to keep them at a minimum.  
> Well then! I hope that you’ll have as much fun reading as I did while writing. Now enough of the empty words and off into a world, where monsters are real, family doesn’t end with blood and nothing is at it seems.  
> See you on the next page, in the middle of a smokey, trashed bar in the south of the US!  
> \- Alice

⛤ **⛧** ⛤  
_○ We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. ○_  
_\- Oscar Wilde_  
⛤ **⛧** ⛤

**Prologue - Flames**

Embers. Flames. Fire.

The strangely familiar but simultaneously unbelievably foreign warmth had started in her chest. Exactly where the heart would have been in a normal person, a fire had been started and it felt like all of her veins and arteries were aflame. She was shaking, without really noticing it. A kind of uncontrolled twitching shook her body and made it impossible for her to move in a calculated way. Soon, the burning had spread from her torso through the fine blood vessels of her body (that could not have been older than two hours old at that point in time) to the tips of her toes and fingers and sent rushed of electricity through her nerve tracts into her brain.

What had started with a soft, barely noticeable, non-disruptive tingle behind her lungs (not unlike that of a numb foot or arm) had after a few seconds reached an almost unbearable extent. The slightly stinging prickle had within moments turned into an agonizing, searing pain, that suffocated every other sensation and every arising rational thought.

Her pale face was smoldering and tears of pain vaporized as soon as they made contact with her feverishly reddened cheeks. Small steam swaths wavered around her like volatile mist and disappeared in the warm air, that smelled like stale whiskey, smokey leather and pungent glass cleaner.

She was silent. No noise left her trembling lips, which dried, cracked and stuck together quickly due to the unnatural heat, her own body emitted from its very core. Her tongue clung swollen and dry to the palette of her mouth and felt strangely numb. Almost, as if it already didn’t belong to her body anymore.

It was unbearable. A pain, unbeknownst to the human body and probably also to that of the most supernatural creatures that live among them. An omnipresent, omnipotent pain, evoked by a mistake of the infallible. The kind of suffering, that even forced the cruelest, most callous of all beings, the father of all pain, to feel begrudging pity. Not least, because he was somehow – part consciously, part unconsciously – at the same time cause and victim of this pain, that was currently eating her up from the inside out. Although he wasn’t able to explain the latter (yet)… or simply didn’t want to.

From her bent position she sank to her knees, allowed sharp wooden splinters to cut into her naked skin and propped her hands up on the wooden floor, trying to find some balance or at least a vague stability. Her breathing was weak and little, crimson foam bubbles, made up of a boiling mixture of saliva and a liquid, that we will call blood for now for the sake of simplicity, were forming along her chapped, firmly pressed together lips. Salty tears burned on her smoldering skin.

Breath. Breeze. Wind.

A fleeting gust of wind passed by her. Although its icy cold stung, it felt like balm on her battered skin. She tried to move her body in the direction, the wind had come from, but her body wouldn’t obey her commands any longer.

The fire inside dazed her, took her ability to see and fogged of the rest of her mind, she still had left but it also strengthened her other senses. Her own panting, chopped off breathing and the hectic rushing of liquid in her veins sounded unbearably loud in her sensitive ears. Like through a thick, obscure veil she believed to sense the periodical thumping of heavy pacing steps – first going in circles and then slowly coming closer and closer – but she didn’t care. The flames, that threatened to engulf her, to turn her into a smoking pile of ashes, made everything else, everything earthly irrelevant. It had taken every feeling from her, every fear, that she might have felt under normal circumstances, had erased every single thought in her mind and had replaced it with pure pain, sheer agony. Yes, she wasn’t even scared of the crushing reality of death, not of the uncertainty that came after it. She might have asked herself where someone like her would end up if she would have been able to make a coherent thought. But it didn’t matter what torture would await her, it always seemed like the better alternative to her current situation. To die, suddenly appeared like the only possible escape.

She was getting hotter and hotter by the second, the pain grew with every rattling breath and even as she believed, it couldn’t get any worse, the intensity of the heat doubled again and burned away even that last, hopeful thought. It was, as if the whole world, maybe even she herself consisted of nothing but pain. She felt as if the fire must have had consumed her completely by now and every time, she could foster the hint, the smallest fraction of a clear thought, she begged the universe to end her suffering. But it didn’t matter how hard she concentrated on this plead, how hard her fingernails buried themselves into the hardwood floor, her desperate calling for help wasn’t answered. Although… who could have been sure, if it was even heard in the first place.

Frost. Chill. Ice.

Without warning, an icy spear drilled itself through her hot cheeks and a healing coldness immediately spread from her face over her whole body. The cold flowed through her, filled her up and grew into an almost electric ecstasy and turned the flickering flames inside her into a tame flickering, iced over the hell that had broken loose in her torso and caused goosebumps on her neck and back. The sudden pain relief made her whimper and her body helplessly collapsed on the warm floor because all the strength she had needed to fight the fire raging inside of it had abandoned her and left her with nothing but exhaustion and never-ending tiredness.

She still didn’t break contact with the hands, that were still laying on her cheeks and hat somehow magically provided relief from the searing pain. On the contrary, she leaned into the touch of the ice-cold fingers with her eyes closed, rested her chin in the stranger’s palms and enjoyed the refreshing coolness in a sort of trance, without thinking of its source. It was probably just a protection mechanism of her body anyways, to shield her from the sufferings she had to endure. So, what harm could it do to indulge in this brief relief?

Only when the pain had subsided enough to come up with a complete, reasonably sensible thought, she heaved herself back into a half sitting, half kneeling position and let her head fall onto her chest while trying to find a comfortable breathing rhythm. She only lifted her chin again, when an impatient, male voice found its way through the thick fog, still clouding her mind. She coughed and felt the skin on her lips burst open once more and little drops falling from her mouth down to the earth.

“Get up.”, ordered the voice – in a weird way seeming slightly absent, as if he didn’t care about the situation, or at least not enough to invest any effort into making himself sound friendly – and immediately a throbbing headache winded through her skull. She narrowed her eyebrows and shook her head, as if she could force the man to shut up that way. He continued to speak without missing a beat. “They’ll probably be here soon.”

This distantly, almost boredly recited, but still unsettlingly mysterious forecast made her finally put her head back and look up with reddened, storm grey eyes to the man, that had somehow managed to save her from the horrible fire with just a single touch of his icy fingers. 

Simultaneously hectic and almost hesitantly the man pulled his left hand away from her. The sudden removal of the cool fingers from her cheek, left behind a numb, slowly warming spot in her face, but contrary to her worst expectation, the burning sensation didn’t start up again.

It took a few moments until the cloudy veil on her eyes vanished and she could see her surroundings clearly again. Something inside of her, told her, that she should remember the fallen over barstools, threadbare carpet and crooked chandelier made from darkened iron, hanging from one of the thick beams under the high ceiling, but she didn’t. She had no idea where she was, let alone how she had gotten there in the first place. But at the moment she was still too drunk from the relieving rescue to let the panic fully overwhelm her. Her gaze wandered around aimlessly until it met that of the man, who was standing in front of her, his left hand on his hip, the other one still cupping her face and looking down on her, lost in thought, with a mixture of unveiled curiosity and doubt on his features. Something about him unsettled her. He seemed to emit a sort of inhuman calmness and had an almost hypnotic effect on her. After a few seconds of silent eye contact, in which he apparently came to an important decision, because he agitatedly ran his hand over his unshaven face, he repeated his initial command.

“Get up.”

Again, he didn’t phrase the two words as a request, but almost as a given fact, while removing the second hand from her face too.

Hesitantly, she seized the hand in front of her face and allowed him to help her up. When she realized, that her legs weren’t fully capable of holding her up yet, it was already too late. She tripped over her own feet and fell straight forward. With a surprised noise, the unknown man caught her mid fall and helped her to her feet again with amazing ease.

“You have to hide.”, he said firmly, with a growing hint of impatience in his voice. “Preferably high up.”

Shaking, she propped her hand up on an unbalanced barstool and wrapped the other arm tightly around her waist, as if to protect herself. The fabric of her flowy, white, knee-length dress was scorched at the hem and the long, billowing sleeves were torn. It had slipped from her shoulder and revealed a long, still bloody scratch wound, that had probably been caused by her own fingernails. After taking a long glance around the room, that looked like there had just detonated a bomb, she gave the man an involuntary, lost look. She knew, that she wouldn’t be able to take three steps on her own in her current constitution (let alone climb up somewhere) and that whatever “would be here soon” would be able to run a whole lot faster than her.

The man erratically ran his fingers through his short, sandy blond hair and clenched his teeth so hard, the muscles in his jaw visibly tensed.

“Fine, come here.”

The sudden change from reserved, maybe impatient indifference to vigorous hast unsettled her and out of insecurity, instead of the required step towards him, she took on to the side and promptly felt pointy shards of glass piercing the naked skin on the sole of her foot. She bit her lower lip but realized fast, that the pain of the cut wound was in no way comparable to the suffering she had had to endure a few minutes before and kept quiet.

The blond man had watched the whole ordeal with his left eyebrow raised, hand clenched in a fist which he now pressed against his forehead while taking a deep breath.

“Come here, I said, little lamb, come here. At least I can’t give you blood poisoning… well? Never mind. Does something… sorry, someone like you need a Tetanus shot? That would be just what I need right now.” Another long sigh left his lips and he shook his head. “What the hell is he thinking?” He crossed his arms, laid an index finger on his lower lip and looked up at the ceiling. With slightly lowered voice he continued: “Because his life isn’t exhausting enough yet, let’s strike him with this…”

He was cut off by another of her coughing attacks and the look he was giving her now seemed almost offended. Only when she was falling over again, he left his reserved, cross-armed position. This time however, instead of catching her again, he simply raised his right arm, index and middle finger stretched out. But before is fingertips could touch her forehead, a door behind them crashed and fell to the floor one or two moments later, kicking up a cloud of dust. A few men stormed in and loud shouting suddenly filled the room.

“Shit.”, cursed the man (although not looking all too alarmed or even concerned) and rolled his eyes, while turning away from her. “Not these guys too.”

Startled, she stumbled a few steps backwards, slipped on her own blood and fell. Resigned, she closed her eyes, awaited the impact of the hard wood of the floor and was surprised when she landed comparingly soft on something, smooth and cool. She blinked hesitantly and… gasped in shock.

Instead of on the floor, scattered with numerous broken bottles and sharp glass shards, she had somehow landed on one of the thick, exposed wooden beams that stretched under the ceiling of the bar over the whole room as design elements. She looked down for the fraction of a second and immediately felt dizzy. Instinctively, she wrapped her arms and legs around the beam and swallowed hard as she gripped it as tight as she could.

Below her, numerous men had already climbed through the hole, where the broken door had once been embedded in the wall and had formed a small crowd around her savior. He looked up at her and with the words “Here, catch!”, he threw something small, shiny in her general direction.

Defying all her fear, she leaned forwards, extended her arm and caught the object before one of the intruders could grab a hold of it. Right away, her stomach rebelled and small black dots danced in front of her eyes, fogging her vision a bit on the edges. As soon as she had found her balance again, she studied the delicate thing in her hands and tried to fade out the obscenities and curses the men below her were shouting at the man and each other.

Sand. Gravel. Stone.

The object turned out to be an intricate, silver necklace on which dangled something heavy and shapeless. A rough little stone. The jewelry seemed familiar to her, almost dear, although she couldn’t remember ever having seen it before.

For a few seconds, she just weighed the necklace in her hand, let her thumb run over its harsh surface. Despite its tiny size it was strangely heavy, as if it contained more secrets and mysteries, than it would ever be ready to reveal at first glance. It was dark and mat but shimmered opal-like in the dim light. It was covered in small, nature made bumps and holes and even smaller, probably man-made scratched in lines and symbols that were so small, that she couldn’t have made them all out, even if she had had a strong magnifying glass. Inquiringly she looked down to the man, who had already turned away from her again, to face the intruders and stood now confidently, hands on his hips in front of the new arrivers. But somehow, he seemed to feel her gaze resting on him because he answered her questioning look without turning around.

“Put it on and please… please don’t move, or you’re going to seriously hurt yourself.”

Another group of men and women came running into the room, that was already so full, that some of the angry figures had to wait outside and limit themselves to looking hostile while looking into the room through its broken windows. They all stopped abruptly in their tracks when they caught sight of the man and all stared at him with puzzled expressions on their angrily contorted faces. Nobody said anything.

“And I really couldn’t use that right now.”, the man added exasperatedly. He raised a hand and she wrapped her shaking arms around her bruised knees. He gave her a quick look out of determined eyes, that were for the fraction of a second flashing carmine red in the morning sun and added with a smirk: “Oh, and it would be best to keep your eyes and ears shut tightly, little lamb.”


End file.
